Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI; ) or al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, officially known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn or TQJBR, was an Iraqi Salafi Sunni jihadist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda, for two years. Origins The group was founded by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (, "Group of Monotheism and Jihad"). The group is believed to have started bomb attacks in Iraq as of August 2003, five months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War, targeting UN representatives, Iraqi Shiite institutions, the Jordanian embassy, provisional Iraqi government institutions. After it pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in October 2004, its official name became Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn.